Method of producing artificial furs of nonuniform fiber density



June 23, 1970 L. COLLEZ 3,516,265

METHOD OF PRODUCING ARTIFICIAL FURS OF NONUNIFORM FIBER DENSITY Filed Dec. 1. .1966 2 Sheets-Sheet l FIGI WWWWJW P P F INVENTOR LOUIS COLLEZ ATTORNEYS June 23, 1970 L. COLLEZ 3,516,265

METHOD OF PRODUCING ARTIFICIAL FURS OF NONUNIFORM FIBER DENSITY Filed Dec. 1, 1966 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 FIG.4D FIG.4F

4 S5 4 b b b b m II/H |||||I||f IIIIIII 8 4 3| V 53 3 5 H646 FIGA4I ""n' "*1 'l" J Illlll Wnm mmnw @H INVENTOR LOUIS COLLEZ ATTORNEYS United States Patent 3,516,265 METHOD OF PRODUCING ARTIFICIAL FURS OF NONUNIFORM FIBER DENSITY Louis Collez, 80 Rue dAlsace, Saint-Die, Vosges, France Continuation-impart of application Ser. No. 480,005, Aug. 16, 1965. This application Dec. 1, 1966, Ser.

Int. Cl. D04b 9/14 US. Cl. 66-9 1 Claim ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE Artificial fur is produced which has ridges or stripes in which the fiber density differs from the fiber density between the ridges. To achieve this, an ordinary Wild man Jacquard knitting machine is operated by feeding fibers to the doffer roll at substantially less than the capacity of the doffer roll to receive fibers. The dofier roll is then rotated several times during the passage before it of the series of needles; and the needles are selectively moved so that different groups of needles will remove different numbers of layers of fibers from the doffer roll.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION This application is a continuation-in-part of applictaion Ser. No. 480,005, filed Aug. 16, 1965, now abandoned.

This invention relates to the production of artificial furs or so-called high pile fabrics.

The present invention has for an object the production of ridged or ribbed high pile fabrics as an imitation of furs produced by the sewing together of small animal pelts, for instance, mink pelts, by the operation of known Wildman Jacquard type knitting machines. Such machines are more fully disclosed in US. Pat. No. 2,953,- 002, Sept. 20, 1960; No. 2,964,932, Dec. 20, 1060; and No. 3,153,335, Oct. 1964, whose disclosures are incorporated in the present specification by reference, so as to avoid the inclusion of unnecessary material.

Previously, attempts have been made to produce such fabrics by processes incsuding the cutting of the pile of the artificial fur as regards height, but these processes are, in general, complicated and the effect obtained resulting from a difference in length of the pile does not provide a successful imitation of all natural pelts. It has been noted that the result can be obtained not by varying the length but the density of the fur pile, this variation in density serving also for strengthening other effects already used in the artificial fur industry, such as rendering more easily visible pile simulating natural short hair of a pelt and/or the different color of the longer and less dense hair which projects beyond the short hair.

High pile knitted fabrics for artificial furs are those in which a base knitted fabric is supplemented by fibers incorporated in such a manner that the fibers are drawn into tufts at each stitch to project from one side of the knitted fabric. In the knitting machines for the manufacture of said high pile fabrics, a fiber stock in the form of roving is fed via pile fiber-feeding stations to the needles of a knitting machine, each needle receiving a tuft before knitting a base yarn, the tuft or fibers being caught in the knitted stitch.

It is well known, in order to provide designs on a high pile knitted fabric, to use a plurality of pile fiberfeeding stations fed with rovings of different colors or fibers of different types arranged before the knitting Patented June 23, 1970 point of the base yarn, the knitting machine being provided with so-called pattern wheels in order that the hooks of the needles catch a tuft on one or the other dotfer rolls of said feeding stations so as to provide ridges in the high pile fabric. But in such a case, care was always taken to have tufts with as regular as possible a number of fibers.

The present invention, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 480,005, filed Aug. 16, 1965, for Artificial Furs, has for its object a process which permits obtaining artificial furs or high pile knitted fabrics having vertical ridges or ribs obtained by varying the density of the pile.

Another object of the invention is the provision of a method of working a known Wildman Jacquard knitting machine provided with a plurality of feed devices having pattern wheels for each feed of base yarn so as to realize high pile knitted fabrics having vertical ridges or ribs.

Another object of the invention is a method of working a known Wildman Jacquard knitting machine provided with a plurality of feeding devices having pattern wheels for each feed of base yarn, the needles of said knitting machine being arranged in a number of groups of needles equal to the number of feeding devices for each feed, the number of needles in each group corresponding to the width of the ridge to be obtained, each group of needles being put by the pattern wheel of its corresponding feeding device in the gathering position with the doffer roll of said feeding device, the carding drums of the feeding devices being fed continuously and the dofier rolls of the feeding devices being run so as to make more than one revolution during the passage of a group of needles in front of it.

Other characteristics in accordance with the invention will appear from the following description taken in connection with the annexed drawings in which;

FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic sectional view of a known Wildman Jacquard knitting machine with two fiber-feeding devices for each yarn feed, to which the process of this invention has been applied.

FIG. 2 is a diagrammatic top plan view of the machine of FIG. 1, the carding drums and pattern wheels being removed.

FIG. 3 is a diagram explaining the process of the invention applied to the knitting machine of FIG. 1.

FIGS. 4A to 4I are diagrams explaining the gathering of fibers from the doffer rolls by the needles.

Now referring to FIG. 1, the invention is applied to a knitting machine of the so-called Wildman Jacquard type having a needle cylinder 1, circular base 2, and needles 3. The shanks 4 of the needles 3 have peripheral lug 5 which slide in one of the grooves in a cam cylinder 7. Another lug 8 at the lower part of the needle shank cooperates with the butts of a so-called pattern wheel 10 rotatably carried by the circular base 2 and driven by the rotation of the needle cylinder through gear wheels 11. Said butts may be in a projecting position 9a or in an inactive position 9b. When a butt raises through a lug 8 the needle to its raised or gathering position, the lug 5 is engaged in the upper groove 6:: of the cam cylinder 7. When no butt is present, the corresponding needle is in its lowered position and its lug 5 moves in the lower groove 6!) of the cam cylinder.

On the circular base 2 of the machine are mounted carding mechanisms or fiber-feeding devices, the machine comprising two such feeding devices for each base yarn feeding chute 13. Said fiber-feeding devices are radially mounted at the periphery of the needle cylinder and in front of each of them the cam cylinder 7 comprises an upper groove portion 6a (FIG. 3).

Each fiber-feeding device comprises feeding cylinders 14 feeding a roving of fibers 15 to a carding drum 16 rotated in the direction of the arrow A. Working cylinders 17 at the periphery of said carding drum equalize the fibers on the periphery of said carding drum. A doffer roll 18a or 1811 provided with card clothing takes up the fibers from the carding drum, and the needles 3 in their raised position take a tuft of fibers therefrom. Now the feeding of the carding drum 16 being constant, said carding drum provides for a constant feeding of its doffer roll 18a or 18b, i.e. the dolfer roll will receive at each turn a substantially constant charge of fibers. If no gathering occurs, the charges will accumulate at each turn. If, on a doffer roll very heavily charged with fibers, the many successive needles are moved into the gathering position, the first needles will take up a maximum charge and progressively the doffer roll will onlybe supplied with a feed charge; and, if this latter corresponds to a needle charge lower than the maximum charge which a needle may keep when gathering from said doffer roll, there will be a progressive reduction in the charge of the different needles.

The process consists therefore in using several feeding devices, two in the example as described, for a single chute 13 and in regulating the pattern wheels 10 so that the needles distributed in successive groups gather for one group on one doffer roll 18a and for the following group on a second doffer roll 18b and possibly for the following groups on third and fourth doifer rolls with a repetition of the cycle. During the passage in front of each fiberfeeding device of groups of needles in the lower position, the doffer roll will be charged with fibers and will then be progressively stripped in the course of the passage of the needles in the upper position.

In short, fibers are fed to the doffer roll at substantially less than the capacity of the doffer roll to receive fibers. The doifer roll is rotated several times during the passage before it of the series of needles, and the needles are selectively moved so that different groups of needles will remove different numbers of layers of fibers from the doifer roll.

FIGS. 4A to 41 illustrate this operation. In said figures the dotfer roll 18 of one feeding device has contact along the line a--a with the carding drum 16 and both are shown as planes which move in the direction of the arrows F and F at equal speeds. Said figures correspond to the state of the fiber charge on the doifer rolls at spaces of time corresponding to the passage of successive needles in front of a point on the periphery of the needle cylinder. The number of needles is reduced so as to clarify the drawings, and it is supposed that each group comprises eight needles.

Let p be the number of needles corresponding to a band (in FIGS. 4A-4I, p is equal to 8) and N the number of needles of the cylinder, these N needles are divided into 11 groups P P P P in such a manner that N=nP. If the case of two doifer rolls 18 feeding the same yarn feed 13 is considered, the pattern wheels 10 will be.

regulated so that the doffer roll 18a feeds the groups P P P etc., and the dofier roll 18b will feed the even groups P P P etc. Thus after the passage in front of the two feeding devices, all the needles of the cylinder will have received fibers and one can proceed to the throwing over and formation of the stitch.

Referring now to FIGS. 4A to 41 and assuming the doifer roll 18 makes two revolutions during the passage of eight needles, after the passage of the eight nongathering needles of the group P in front of it, it has accumulated two charges taken from the carding drum 16, and when it leaves line aa before arriving at the gathering line b-b of the raised needles, the charge on the card clothing of the doffer roll will be equal to thrice the single charge. As the needles gather fibers from the card clothing following a helical path, the charge on the doffer roll will be repartited on helical surfaces, and

4 just before the first gathering needle 3 of the group P reaches the doffer roll (FIG. 4A), the charge on the doffer roll comprises a surface s with a unitary charge, a surface s with twice the unitary charge, and a surface S3 which will be gathered by the needle 3 and which has a charge equal to thrice the unitary charge, and said surfaces are displaced towards the right of the figures when the doffer roll 18 and carding drum 16 rotates (see FIGS. 4A to 4H). Supposing now that each gathering needle removes all the fibers from the gathered carding cloth over a width equal to the distance between two successive needles, after passing the gathering line b--b,

surface s;; gathered by needles 3 to 3 will become a surface 5 having no fiber on it until it reaches line aa (FIGS. 4D to 41) where it will take up a unitary charge from the carding drum giving a surface s, with a single unitary charge which will be gathered by the needles 3 to 3 of the group P to become a surface s having no fiber on it. Accordingly the needles 3 to 3 of each group will catch tufts having a mean number of fibers thrice that of needles 3 to 3 It can be seen that the speed of rotation of the doffer roll plays an important role. However, variation in the density of the pile will result from the passage of several needles following the same trajectory over the doffer roll, which variation is produced by stages, and the speed of the doifer roll should, for a regular removal, be equal to a whole number of turns during the passage of p needles in front of a point.

The embodiments described above can have many modifications without departing from the scope of the present invention.

Having described my invention, I claim:

1. In a method for the production of ridges of varying density on artificial fur fabric by the operation of a Wildman Jacquard type knitting machine that has at least one doffer roll and means for feeding fibers to the doifer roll and needles movable past the doifer roll and selectively individually movable toward and away from the dofier roll to gather fibers from the doifer roll, the needles being arranged in a plurality of groups which corresponds to the spacing of said ridges; the improvement comprising rotating the doffer roll and feeding fibers thereto during each rotation thereof at a rate less than the capacity of the doffer roll to receive fibers, the dotfer roll accumulating fibers thereon during the passage of non-selected groups of needles whereby the surface of the doffer roll as it rotates from said fiber feeding means to said needles has thereon a coating of fibers having helically delineated portions which differ from each other as to the number of layers of fibers by which each said portion is comprised, and moving the needles of a selected group of needles to gather different numbers of layers of fibers from the doffer roll, the doffer roll making a plurality of rotations during the passage of the selected group of needles and the number of needles in the selected group being such that the first needles of the selected group gather fibers from a desired number of layers and the latter needles of the selected group gather fibers from a single layer to produce a substantial variation in fiber density therebetween.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS ROBERT R. MACKEY, Primary Examiner 

